Fever-Tree reports positive start to year as it appoints new non- executive director

ByLisa Riley

Published: 17 May, 2018

Fever-Tree has reported a ‘positive” start to the year and announced it is trading in line with expectations for the full year ending 31 December, 2018.

Following “another strong year of growth” in 2017, the first four months of 2018 had seen “further positive progress”, said chairman Bill Ronald in a statement issues today at the group’s AGM.

“Last year was another year of strong growth for Fever-Tree with all regions delivering impressive rate of sale growth and market share gains across both the on and off trade,” he said, adding the positive progress made in the first four months of this year was “most notably in the UK where, as market leader, the company is well positioned as the wider mixer category continues to evolve”.

The transition to the company’s wholly owned operations in the US was continuing to plan, he added.

“We have made excellent progress, with the Fever-Tree US team now in place ahead of taking direct management of our distribution network and marketing effort on 1 June 2018,“ he said.

In a separate statement, Fever-Tree announced it has appointed Domenico De Lorenzo as non-executive director and chairman of the audit committee with immediate effect.

A qualified chartered accountant, De Lorenzo brought a wealth of financial management experience with him, having spent 20 years at SABMiller where he focused on strategy and corporate development before reaching the position of CFO.

During his time at SABMiller he was involved with more than 100 global transactions, acquisitions and disposals, prior to its sale to ABInBev in 2016.

“As a former FTSE 100 CFO, De Lorenzo has valuable experience of building global premium brands and of scaling already significant businesses and I have no doubt he will further strengthen our board’s capabilities,” said Ronald.

UK-based Fever-Tree, which was founded in 2005, distributes its mixers to more than 50 countries worldwide.

In the second half of 2017 it pushed out the likes of rival Schweppes to become the number one mixer brand by value in the UK off-trade (IRI, 13 weeks to 31/12/17).